Kitabı oku: «Birds and Nature Vol. 9 No. 5 [May 1901]», sayfa 4

A BACK-YARD CLASS

The Farnum’s back-yard was something disagreeable. Still it didn’t matter much, thought the children, as long as the front yard was nicely kept and there was a high fence all around the back. Besides, Mr. Farnum was away from home traveling all the week; Mrs. Farnum was so busy that she hardly ever saw the disreputable yard, and the children, Rob, Lora and Baby Jim, liked best to play away from home.

At last it dawned on the mother’s mind that they were hardly ever at home except to eat and to sleep and to get ready to go away again and she began to worry about it and wonder what she should do.

That very day Rob came running in to show a bug which he had in a bottle. It was such a queer looking specimen that all became interested in it at once.

“I’ll keep it till papa comes back, he’ll be sure to know!” exclaimed Rob proudly.

“But this is only Tuesday, my boy. You can’t keep it in that bottle all the week without food or drink. It must not be left to starve,” Mrs. Farnum replied.

“We’ll find it something to eat,” cried the children, and off they ran.

But this was not such an easy matter. Mr. Bug would not touch any of the back-yard “vegetables,” as Rob called the variety of weeds that clung to the rotten fence boards or matted the ground of the large garden. In spite of their efforts the bug stuck to the corner of the bottle and refused to be comforted, with food, at least. At last, in despair, Rob ran to the drug store and asked what he could give the bug to “make it die a peaceful death.”

“Just put a layer of pyrethrum in the bottom of your bottle,” answered the druggist, “keep it corked tight, and you can make every bug in your yard die happy. Pyrethrum is a powder that is harmless to people (though of course you must not eat it), but the least smell of it kills insects.”

Rob went home delighted. “I’ll make a collection of bugs, as Sam Ward does of butterflies,” he declared.

“I’d help you if it wasn’t for those horrid spiders,” said Lora. “I’m afraid as death of them ever since I read about a baby dying from a spider-bite.”

“Pshaw! Only a few spiders are poisonous, that is, I think so. Let’s get a library book about them and find out; then may be we’ll have a spider collection, too,” answered the practical brother.

While Rob was getting his bottles ready in which to “electrocute” the bugs and Lora was going to the library after the books, Mrs. Farnum was rummaging in the attic. At last she came down bearing triumphantly aloft a big old-fashioned work-box.

“This you may have for a specimen case,” she said. “If you’ll fit some little drawers in it, Rob, I’ll line them with scraps of velvet and have a glass top put on.”

The children set to work at once, and in vain the neighbors’ children whistled for them on the other side of the high board fence. Lora took the hammock from the front lawn to swing beneath the old apple tree. But the tall weeds reached up to the hammock, so Rob had to go for the old scythe rusting in the fence corner and Baby Jim came dragging a hoe with which to cut them down. Soon they had a large space cleared under and around the apple trees, and when it was carefully raked and swept they ran in to beg their mother for some porch chairs for their “summer parlor.”

Then Rob made for himself a camp-stool that he could carry around and plant among the bushes where he would sit watching for certain bugs to appear and trying to catch them in his bottle. Such patience as it took at first! And how little Rob had of it! But Lora read long, interesting chapters to him out of “The Insect World,” and the specimen case grew so fast and became so fascinating that he found the patience quite worth while.

Whatever Rob did, of course, Baby Jim wanted to do.

“The ant-hill’s mine! I ’scovered it!” he announced at supper one evening. “I’ll make a fence wound it to keep the wolves out, and I’ll have the ants for my sheepses.”

Mrs. Farnum did not look as pleased as the rest.

“I don’t want the ants crawling all over you,” she said.

“No, they won’t; I’ll take my red chair out and sit on it, like Rob does,” he answered, solemnly.

The next day he set to work to build a big circular fence around his ant hill, working as perseveringly as ever any real shepherd did to get his fold ready, and accepting no help from Rob except allowing him to shave up a board to furnish the “palings.” Then, day after day, while Lora swung in the hammock reading aloud to Rob, little Jim sat perched on his red chair herding his ant-flock.

“I feed them and they eat, but they never drink a tiny bit,” he said.

“The ants find their drink away down in the ground, dear,” replied his mother. “Now tell me what you have learned about your sheep.”

“I learned a greedy lesson to-day,” said Baby Jim. “One ant had some food and he met an ant who hadn’t any, and he divided; then he went on some more and met another ant with not any, and he told him to come over to my chair-leg where the cookie was.”

The family all laughed, and still more at Rob, who asked, “Is Jim going to be an ant-hropologist, papa?”

“Perhaps,” answered Mr. Farnum. “Now, children, I have something nice to tell you. I have hired a man to come and help us improve the back-yard. He will cut the weeds and trim up the trees and bushes, and we can plan the walks and flower-beds for next spring.”

“How lovely!” cried Lora.

“I don’t know about that,” said Rob, with an ugly pucker in his forehead. “It will scare all my bugs away. They like weeds and dirty places.”

“Yes,” admitted his papa, “but next spring you will have to go to the woods for new specimens.”

“It won’t scare my specimens away,” laughed Lora. “I’ve been studying birds lately. You see when I become tired of reading I just lie back in the hammock and watch the birds in the tree-tops. They are so very smart, and they do the queerest things!”

So the plan to improve the yard suited all but Baby Jim, who wailed long and loud because his ant city would be destroyed. In vain did the family try to comfort him. He could not be persuaded to abandon his flock.

That night, to Jim’s distress, a cold rainfall set in. “My sheeps will all be dwounded,” he wailed! “I meant to make a ’bwella over them!”

“Look here,” said Lora, drawing him up to the sofa beside her. “This is the picture of the inside of an ant-hill. Here is the top door where you see the ants go in, then they go down to this large room, then sideways to this one, then down, down, down.”

Baby Jim’s eyes opened very wide. He seized the book and studied the drawing long and earnestly.

“Your sheep are all down in the rooms now, having a nice Sunday, I think,” continued Lora. “When winter comes and the snow is all over the ground they won’t come up at all. Haven’t you seen them carrying food in to pile up in one of their rooms?”

“O, and my cookies are all down there!” he cried in great delight.

When the man appeared in the morning Baby Jim marched out with an air of importance, and, after surveying the deserted ant-hill, he turned to the man and said, “My sheeps are all gone into the house to bed, so you can clean up their meadow if you want to.”

And thus it was that the Farnum children began a study which will interest them as long as they live. There is no longer any need to worry about their living at the neighbors; and at last the Farnum back-yard has become not only respectable, but actually a “thing of beauty and joy forever.”

Lee McCrae.

THE AMERICAN ELK OR WAPITI

(Cervus canadensis.)

Centuries ago, before Columbus sailed the unknown seas which divided him from the New World of his dreams and ambitions, before the birth of De Soto, that adventurer whose discoveries and conquests were to unfold to the Old World the mysteries and fascinations of the new land, through the virgin forest and over the broad plains as yet unknown to the white race, roamed many animals which were widely distributed throughout North America.

They fearlessly sought those localities which would furnish them the most abundant supply of food and water. Unmolested except by their natural enemies, they multiplied and lived a free and untrammeled life.

In these early times the Wapiti or the American Elk, as it is commonly though erroneously called, was probably the most widely distributed quadruped in North America. Its range extended from the northern part of Mexico northward to Hudson’s Bay and from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean. At the present time, however, but a few wild individuals are left in the United States east of the Mississippi and lower Missouri Rivers. They are occasionally met with in the wilder regions bordering Lake Superior, and it is reported that they are still living in the mountainous regions of Pennsylvania and Virginia. The advance of civilization, causing the cultivation of the lands and the destruction of the forests, has gradually driven this noble animal to the westward and into the wilds of British America. In the states bordering the Pacific Ocean and along the western tributaries of the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers it is still quite common. One writer tells us that “in the rich pasture lands of the San Joaquin and Sacramento it formerly was to be seen in immense droves and with the antelope, the black-tailed deer, the wild cattle and mustangs covered those plains with herds rivalling those of the bison east of the mountains or of the antelope in South Africa.”

The name Wapiti is of Indian origin, and in their language is used to designate a Rock Mountain goat. The name elk so commonly applied to this animal should properly be limited to the moose.

The Wapiti is closely related and belongs to the same genus as the famous stag or red deer (Cervus elaphus) of Europe. This animal, which is smaller than the Wapiti, inhabits the forests of mountainous regions.

In both the Wapiti and the stag the senses of sight, hearing and smell are well developed. They will detect a human being or other animal when some distance away. Though their acute senses protect them, they are said to have poor memories as well as weak powers of comprehension. The Wapiti when listening raises its head and throws forward its erected ears. When entering the forest it will examine the surrounding open country and sniff the wind, seeking possible danger.

The antlers of both Wapiti and stag are much alike, though those of the former are longer and heavier, corresponding to its larger size. The full growth of the horns is attained about the seventh year. The perfect horns are slightly oval in transverse section and thickly covered with warts or slight elevations, which are arranged in longitudinal lines. All the branches or prongs are situated on the front side of the main trunk. “The general color is a light chestnut red, which deepens into a brownish hue on the neck and legs and almost into a black on the throat and along the median line of the under surface of the body. The buttocks are yellowish white, bordered by a dusky band which extends down the posterior surface of the hind legs.” In winter the fur is much thicker and finer and the general color is more gray than in summer. “During the mating season the males have fierce combats, and at this time the male Wapiti emits a peculiar noise, resembling the braying of an ass, beginning with a loud shrill tone and ending in a deep guttural note.” At this time, even when kept in confinement, the male is easily irritated and may attack people. Old males will frequently wage persistent and long battles for supremacy. The antlers are used as the weapons in these duels, and cases have been recorded where these have become so firmly interlocked that they could not be separated, resulting in the death of both individuals.

When food is plentiful and the Wapiti is not constantly disturbed, it will remain in the same region, only straying away during the mating season. They assemble in herds of a greater or less number of individuals. The females and fawns usually remain together; the older females without fawns form another herd and the old males, as a rule, lead a more or less solitary life, except during the mating season.

The Wapiti is more common in low grounds in the vicinity of marshes and well wooded tracts, where it feeds on grasses and the young branches and leaves of the willows and allied trees.

The Wapiti is graceful and proud in its bearing and very light in its movements. This is especially true of the male, which may be described as an animal of “noble carriage.” When moving from place to place it walks rapidly and runs with remarkable swiftness.